What is DDoS Protected Web Hosting?
One of the top priorities when evaluating various web hosts is security. What kind of security measures do they have in place and is it a top priority? Of all cyberattacks, distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are one of the biggest threats to your website. In fact, there are expected to be about 17 million attacks by 2020. This attack can take down your website and the aftermath can be a huge mess.
Unfortunately, nobody is immune to these attacks. One of the largest ones to date was a 600 gigabyte per second hack which ultimately crashed BBC New’s website. However, there are things that you can do to mitigate risk. One of those things is investing in DDoS protected web hosting.
What is DDoS Protected Hosting?
DDoS protected hosting uses software to sort legitimate and illegitimate traffic coming to your website and only allows legitimate traffic to pass through.
In addition to software, there are a number of other precautions your web hosting provider can take to minimize the risk of a DDoS attack such as solid infrastructure, proper network configurations, appropriate security software, and server protection. We’ll discuss how you can evaluate a potential hosting provider for all four of these characteristics below.
What to Look For in DDoS Protected Web Hosting
You may have noticed that your basic plan shows that you currently have DDoS protected web hosting. And you probably do. An increasing number of web hosting companies are incorporating DDoS protection into even their most basic plans, but it often isn’t robust enough for a company that depends heavily on its website.
In fact, most DDoS attacks target larger websites and the damage costs them roughly $20,000 - $40,000 per hour. If you want increased protection, one of the variables that you can control is how much bandwidth you purchase.
For example, the average entry-level hosting plan will usually include about 10-40 gigabytes per second while more robust plans offer about 100 gigabytes per second. In addition to purchasing the correct bandwidth, your hosting company should also have a few things in place:
- Solid Infrastructure: Any DDoS protected web hosting company should have a solid infrastructure. Try to find a provider that has multiple data centers and evenly spreads the data between them. This means that even if one data center is attacked, traffic can still come to your website through the others. Ideally, their data centers should be in different geographical locations.
- Network Configurations: There are a lot of small network configurations when purchasing DDoS protected web hosting. For example, they should block DNS responses from outside your network.
- Web Application Firewalls: Many people believe that firewalls can protect you from DDoS attacks, but they actually pass right through a typical firewall guarding the port of entry. Therefore, your web hosting company should also have web application firewalls. In this case, the application firewall is actually located on a deeper layer (layer 7 of the IOS model) and prevents DDoS attacks from entering the server.
- DNS Server Protection: Your web hosting provider should also make an effort to protect their DNS server. An attack on the DNS server could also bring web servers offline. Ensure they have a strong DNS server configuration and that they keep the servers up to date. If they have a cloud-based server, they should be in pretty good shape.
The Best DDoS Protected Web Hosting
While there are a number of different options when it comes to selecting a web hosting provider, few take DDoS protection as seriously as Host For Web. We regularly revisit each of the four protection steps mentioned above as well as many others and offer various plans to fit each of our client’s needs. Contact us today to learn how we can help you achieve secured web hosting.
